Proverbs and Quotations Archives

Current: "...Each age is a dream that is dying/ or one that is coming to birth..." Arthur O'Shaughnessy

July 15th 2009: "The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance: which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt": John Philpot Curran's speech on being elected Lord Mayor of Dublin July 10th 1790

June 11th 2009: " It has pleased God to bless our endeavours at Drogheda...I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the population... I do not think thirty escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody for the Barbadoes.. I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone to whom indeed the praise of his mercy belongs".: Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) on his campaign in Ireland

September 20th 2008"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative": Oscar Wilde

August 28th 2008 Irish Proverb: You wouldn't worry about what people think if you only knew how seldom they do!

Thursday July 24th 2008: 'If we begin with certainties we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient, we shall end in certainties: Francis Bacon

Monday June 16th 2008 "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing; a great deal of it absloutely fatal! : Oscar Wilde

Tuesday May 12th 2008 "I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever, that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying": Oscar Wilde

Tuesday April 1st 2008: " I can always guarantee that the Irish Citizen Army will fight but I cannot guarantee that it will be on time": James Connolly
March: Proverb:Never make a custom or break a custom
February 26th 2008: "The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech": G.B. Shaw

January 25th 2008: "In me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on." (Beckett from "Molloy")January 18th 2008: “Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.”: Horace 65BC to 8BC

January 11th 2008: " A questioning man is half way to being wise": Jonathan Swift

January 8th 2008: W hen you kiss a rogue, count your teeth!
Dec. 21st 2007: "Every day a day longer now by a cock's step in the duncle.": Maire Cháit
Dec. 14th 2007: 'Téann an saol thart mar bheadh eiteoga air
agus cuireann gach aon Nollaig
bliain eile ar do ghualainn.' (
Life goes by as if it had wings,
and every Christmas puts
another year on your shoulder.)

December 7th 2007: "When's the last time you walked by a pub in Dublin and heard Irish music? When's the last time you ordered a coffee and heard an Irish accent?" Michael Flatley

November 30th 2007: “A man without a cow has no need of a scythe and a man without a dog has to do his own barking”

November23rd 2007: Dá fhada an lá tagann an tráthnóna.( However long the day, the evening will come.)

November 16thth 2007: "Greater love than this, he said, no man hath, that a man lay down his wife for his friend": James Joyce

November 9th 2007: "It's my rule never to lose my temper till it would be detrimental to keep it: Sean O'Casey in "The Plough and the Stars".
November 2nd 2007: "Glaonn gach coileach go dána ar a atrainn fhéin" (Every cock crows boldly in his own farmyard.)

October 26thth 2007: "We're going to be really ashamed of ourselves when this whole story about Guantanamo comes out. Guantanamo is a really depraved place...":Pullitzer prize winner and discoverer of Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Seymour Hersh, speaking at Trinity College Dublin conference.

September28th 2007: Literary critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how its done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves: Brendan Behan (1923-64)

September21st 2007: "Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover when it is too late, that the only thing one never regrets are ones mistakes.": Oscar Wilde

September 14th 2007: "Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week": G.B. Shaw

September 7th 2007: Buail an iarann te. (Strike the hot iron.)

August 31st 2007: "What the difference between a man and a woman is I cannot conceive!: John P. Mahaffy.

August 23rd 2007: "The thought of a thousand people crunching celery all at the same time horrified me!": G.B. Shaw on refusing an invitation to a vegetarian dinner.

August 17th 2007: “I BELIEVE that God wants me to be president.” George W. Bush"I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people..." Hitler - Berlin, March 1936

August10th 2007: "We're so obsessed with modernity we don't realise what we're losing. They're making gazillions of dollars in Ireland, but they're losing their culture": (Tommy Makem on 'cultural amnesia' among Irish people.)

May 30th 2007: "The
doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance":Benjamin Franklin

May 24th 2007 "Success
has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan": President John
Kennedy

May 3rd 2007"Pleasing for a moment
is of some consequence, for if we take care of the moments the years will
take care of themselves.": Maria Edgeworth

Thursday April 26th 2007 "Ní
dhéanfaidh smaoineamh an treabhadh duit."
(You'll never plough a field turning it over in your mind.)

Thursday April 12th 2007 "For
the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though
they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that
seem than by those that are.": Niccolo Machiavelli

Friday March 30th 2007 " Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your Honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse: Mark Twain.

Wednesday March 14th 2007 Irish proverb: Is minic paidrín fada ag rogaire’ (‘It’s often the rogue who has the longest prayer).’

Wednesday March 7th 2007: Alfred Hitchcock once said that just by looking at G.B. Shaw he could tell there was still famine in Ireland . Shaw replied: “One look at you Mr. Hitchcock and I know who caused it!”

Wednesday February 28th 2007 "The measure of a person's real character is what they would do if they knew they never would be found out." Thomas Macaulay.

Wednesday February 21st (Ash Wednesday) "What I especially like about Englishmen is that, after they have called you a thief and a liar and have patted you on the back for being so charming in spite of it, they look honestly depressed if you fail to see that they were paying you a handsome compliment": Robert Lynd

Wednesday February 7th:“Today's human rights violations are the causes of tomorrow's conflicts.”: Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Retired)

Wednesday January 10th 2007 "You can always tell the terrorist: he's the one with the small bomb!': Brendan Behan

Wednesday January 3rd:"Happiness walks on busy feet."

Thursday December28th 2006: "A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday": Jonathan Swift

Wednesday December 13th 2006: "People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them they make them": G.B. Shaw

Wednesday November 15 2006: Tacitus, AD 97: ‘To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.’

Wednesday November 8 2006 "Only the winners decide what were war crimes": Gary Wills - Author

Wednesday November 1st 2006: 21st century deja vu?: "An evil exists that threatens every man,woman, and child of this great country. We must take steps to insure our domestic security and protect our Homeland" - Adolf Hitler (1933)

Wednesday October 18th 2006"Is é do mhac do mhac inniú,
ach is í d'iníon d'iníon go deo."(Your son is your son today, but your daughter is your daughter forever.)

Wednesday October 18th 2006 "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction": Blaise Pascal

Wed.October 11th 2006: "Only bigots these days sneer at the 'cúpla focal' as if it is hypocritical to use just a few Irish words if you haven't got lots of Irish words": Nuala Ó Faoileán, Sunday Tribune, 17/9/'06

Wed. Sept. 27th 2006'An rud a ghoilleas ar an gcroí caithfidh an t-súil é a shileas.'
(What pains the heart must be washed away with tears.)

Wed. Sept. 20th 2006: "And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace": George Bernard Shaw - "Caesar and Cleopatra"

Wednesday August 9 Mark Twain: The War Prayer: O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire...

Wed. June 28th 2006"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.": William Pitt

Wed. June 21st 2006 : Nuair a bhíonn an cat amuigh, bíonn an luch ag rince. ( When the cat's away, the mice can play).

Wed. June 7th 2006:'If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago':(Sir George Porter, 1973)

May 31st 2006: The difference between a clever man and a wise one is that a clever man is smart enough to get himself out of a situation that a wise man would not get himself into in the first place.

May 24th 2006: Is minic a rinne bromach gioblach
capall cumasach.
(A ragged colt often made a powerful horse.)

May 17th 2006:'It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers"': Arundhati Roy

May 10th 2006: This week's proverb: An áit a mbíonn mná bíonn caint agus an áit a mbíonn géanna bíonn callán.
(Where there are women there is talk, and where there are geese there is cackling.)

May 2nd 2006:"This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown." Walt Whitman

April 26th 2006: Filleann an feall ar an bhfeallaire.(The treachery returns to the betrayer.)

April 19th 2006:The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none: Robert Carlyle (1795 - 1881)

April 12th 2006: "Dóchar liaigh gach anró." (Hope, the physician of all misery)

April 5th 2006:"When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking.": John Woden

March 29th 2006:'Briseann an duchais tre shuile an chait.' (One's true colours emerge in the eyes of the cat or, in vino veritas)

March 8th 2006 Is minic a bhris beál duine a shrón.
(It is often that a person's mouth broke his nose.)

March 1st 2006:"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.": Mark Twain

Feb.15th 2006: "Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction." : Thomas Jefferson

Feb. 8th 2006: An té a dtéann cáil na mochéirí amach dó ní miste do chodhladh gho méanlae ( He who gets a name for early rising can sleep till midday)

Feb 1 2006: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation": Henry David Thoreau

Jan. 25th 2006:Is uaigneach an níochán nach mbíonn léine fear ann (It is a lonely washing that has no mans shirt in it.)

September 14th 2005: ' Then catch the moments as they fly, And use them as ye aught, man;/Believe me, happiness is shy/And comes not, aye, when sought, man'. Robbie Burns

Wed. Aug. 31st: "Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan": John F. Kennedy

August 24th 2005: "Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone..."

Wednesday Aug. 24th 2005: "Never sell your hen on a wet day!"

Wednesday August 17th: ‘There is one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about': Oscar Wilde

Wed August 10th: 'Bullshit baffles brains'

Wednesday July 27th:"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." (author unknown)

Thursday July 21st:"The path of excess leads to the tower of wisdom. The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego is incomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tame instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure." William Blake

Wednesday July 13th: "No good deed goes unpunished"

Thursday July 7th:"Contraceptives should be used on all conceivable occasions." Spike Milligan

Wednesday June 29th:"Money can't buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy." Spike Milligan

Tuesday June 21st '05:"A shut mouth catches no flies"

June 15th:"The oftener seen the less required, the seldomer seen the most admired" Mary Kate Clancy

June 8th:"The pound you have in your pocket the day you die is a lost pound!"

June 4th:"Guess eggs where you see shells!" Mary Kate Mc Gowan

May 25th '05: "Man, poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man belongs to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years. He can't help himself. It is in his race. The History of Woman is very different. We have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the first." Oscar Wilde in "A Woman of No Importance"

Wednesday May 18: "Women give to men the very gold of their lives. But they invariably want it back in small change": Oscar Wilde

Thursday May 12: "I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes illness worthwhile" G.B. Shaw

Tuesday May 3rd:"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" G.B. Shaw

Wednesday April 27:“Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.” O.W. “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.

Tuesday April 19 2005: "She wore far too much make-up last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman". Oscar Wilde from 'An Ideal Husband'

Thursday April 14:2005'Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never have time. They are always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands': Oscar Wilde from 'A Woman of no Importance'.

Saturday April 9 :'One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.': Oscar Wilde from 'A Woman of no Importance':